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Note: Reference:
History of Randolph County, Indiana 1882 by E. Tucker
David Semans (late of Greensfork) was born at Wheeling W. VA. in 1802, and came to Highland County, Ohio, in 1813. He went for himself in 1819, marrying in that year, at the age of seventeen. They came to Randolph County in 1825, settling on Nolan's Fork, and removing to Soartansburg in 1835. In 1840, he returned to his farm southwest of Arba for awhile, and not very long afterwards moved to Eel River, Miami County, Ind. (1845); thence back to Randolph County, in 1855, and to Minnesota in 1865, and to Iowa in 1870, making his home for several years with some one of his numerous children in Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. He has been thrice marrird. His wives were Rebecca (Elizabeth?) Lewis, Rebecca Bowen and Ruth Ann Cook. All three are dead, the last one dying in 1877. He has had twenty-four children-eight by his first wife, fourteen by the second and two by the third. He had six sons in the army at the same time, their united services amounting to twelve or fourteen years. One was killed at the battle of Franklin after his term of service had expired. Mr. S has been mostly a farmer, has taught school many terms and sold goods seven or eight years. He has been an Abolitionist from his boyhood, and a church member for sixty-two years-first-Methodist Episcopal, then Wesleyan and again Methodist Episcopal. Mr Semans is tall and imposing in mien and bearing, large-framed and muscular; and though now somewhat enfeebled, yet his erect and stately form gives him an appearance both dignified and venerable, and he seems the very image and ideal of an aged patriarch of the olden tomes. (this was written before his death.) He was an early pioneer of Greensfork Township, living first southwest of Spartansburg, then in that town; leaving the region at length, and, after long years spent in various places, dying in Iowa in the spring of 1881, seventy-nine years of age. He was a farmer, a teacher, a preacher, a Justice of the Peace, and at one time (1830) a member of the Legislature. His second wife was the daughter of Ephraim Bowen, Sr., of Greensfork, the fourth settler in Randolph County. Many of his twenty-four children lived to be grown and married, and, in 1880, sixteen were living and married. How many more of the twenty-four have been married we do not know. Mr. S. was tall and stately, straight as a tree, a grand and splendid specimen of the Anglo-Saxon race. While he was visiting his old neighbors and his kinsfolk in Randolph County, during the summer of 1880, he seems as though several years of life might yet be his among men. But his work is done, and his stately form lies low in the silent dust, and hid freed spirit has gone home to its endless rest. May we "die the death of the righteous, and my our last end be like his!"
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